Article excerpt

THE man named by a coroner as the likely killer of Bowen schoolgirl Rachel Antonio will be forced to pay costs after his failed attempt to overturn a coroner's findings in March.

A Supreme Court justice upheld a coroner's findings in March that Robert Paul Hytch was responsible for the death of Bowen schoolgirl Rachel Antonio. Hytch has always denied having anything to do with Rachel's death.

The judgment at the time, delivered by Justice Peter Applegarth, said Hytch had opposed the coroner's findings via two main arguments.

The first was that Coroner David O'Connell had wrongly conducted the inquest under

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the new coroner's Act instead of the old and that his findings were not in line with the available evidence. But Justice Applegarth disagreed and did not accept either argument.

The Attorney General Yvette D'Ath then filed an application in the Supreme Court, demanding Hytch pay for the costs incurred by the Crown to fight him in court. …